Question

Move DigitalOcean WP site to another DigitalOcean WP site

I am attempting to upgrade our severly outdated WP site to a new droplet. I am using the All-In-One Migration tool and have backed up from old WP and trying to import to new WP but the database restore gets to 94% and then locks up on me and goes no further.

I do get the message that I’m migrating from PHP 7 to PHP 8 error message but still continue. Is this my issue? I have emptied database, purged plug-ins, etc before trying again, all with same results. What am I missing?

I need to admit that I’m new to WP, so there may something I’m greatly missing. Thanks for your help.


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Accepted Answer

I was able to get this working, finally! I finally discovered what I was doing wrong in downgrading to PHP 7.4 and the MySQL plugin. I had to install php7.4-mysql. Once I did that, I could get back into WP and finish the import. Now I’m comparing settings and upgrading back to PHP 8

Thank you for your assistance.

Bobby Iliev
Site Moderator
Site Moderator badge
April 22, 2025

Hey!

Yep, that PHP 7 to PHP 8 jump could definitely be causing issues. Especially if your old plugins or themes aren’t fully compatible. All-in-One WP Migration sometimes struggles with large imports or version mismatches I think.

You can try increasing the PHP upload/import limits on the new server.

Also, if you’re comfortable with SSH, you can also import the .wpress file directly into the wp-content/ai1wm-backups folder and restore from there.

And if you’re still stuck, you might want to spin up a PHP 7 droplet temporarily, complete the import, then upgrade PHP after verifying the site.

Let me know how it goes!

- Bobby

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